We'd finally managed to shake off Chiho and I stole into the bathroom, feet unsteady on the tile floor, and closed the door behind me, remembering to lock it this time. I waited for the room to stop spinning and when it did, found Subaru already waiting for me in the tub.

My heart pounded. Naked Subaru. If I took another few steps forward...I could see everything. If I took a few more...I could have everything. My mouth felt very dry, and my chest very tight.

"You...you bring the uh…" I said, nervously pulling at a string of my hair, not moving from the doorway.

"Oh, those. Nah, I forgot them. We can do it without, it'll be fine."

"Oh. I'll...go, uh. I'll go get them. Your room, right?"

"Nah, it's fine, we don't need 'em. You want your first time to be special, don't you?"

"Of course. Yeah. But uh, it's already special, right? Because it's with you?"

"But nothing can happen the first time anyway. Go ahead and look it up."

"I'm just gonna get them anyway to be safe."

"Whatever, loser." He stretched and hung his arm and feet over the edge of the tub, vastly increasing the amount of skin he had showing above the water. My breath caught in my throat and I had to turn around and excuse myself before I jumped him on the spot.

I quietly closed the door behind me, stepped silently through Subaru's open door, picking up the box of condoms from the nightstand drawer, right where he'd showed me them when he was trying to entice me last night…

Last night. A lump grew in my throat and guilt churned in my stomach. Where was my flask? Why hadn't I brought it with me? I shouldn't need it, I'd spent all day liquoring myself up to build up the courage to turn Subaru down, but when he approached me for it, I couldn't say no.

And why would I? This was what I wanted. This was everything I wanted. All of Saga's preachiness yesterday seemed so hazy and far away now, it was just me and Subaru now.

I opened the bathroom door and couldn't help but to giggle, seeing him still nakedly half-hanging out of the tub, and closed (and locked) the door behind me.

"Got 'em," I said, shaking the box at him enticingly. "You, uh...ready?"

"I'm always ready, baby."

I took a couple hesitant steps towards him and then slid the box across the ground the rest of the way. He put his hand on the box and pushed it away.

"Oh, I can't reach," he said, his voice deep and suave. "Come get it for me."

Every part of my body felt weird. My head was spinning, my stomach was doing flips, my gut gnawed away at me, my loins felt like they were burning. My hands shook, my face was flush, I took hesitant step after hesitant step until he was in view in all his glory, beneath the water.

I couldn't breathe, but still somehow managed to do as he said. He gave me terse, barking orders, and my startled obedience was the only thing which passed through my buzzing brain. At his insistence, I touched him, stripped naked, put on the condom, joined him in the bath.

There was too much water. I couldn't get in without pouring it everywhere. He said it would be fine but I let the drain go a bit. He pulled me down and kissed me, and I felt the white fog filling my senses engulf in flames, as heat poured through my everything.

Without warning, still kissing me, he dropped me onto himself. It was so abrupt, so...I don't know, I was expecting it to be a bigger deal. It hurt, but he moaned luxuriously, and I was happy he was happy. I guessed...guessed that was it.

It actually hurt a lot. The booze had blunted the sharpness of the pain, but I felt a crushing insistent hurt, like I'd been cut inside. I tried to tell him to stop, to slow down, but it just came out as a gasp. I was sliding all over him and there wasn't anything to hold onto, except the lip of the bath, which was at a really awkward height. The water sloshed rhythmically, embarrassingly. Things had felt better for a moment, but I felt the water splashing inside me, it was uncomfortable and somehow, made everything feel dryer instead of wetter. I leaned back and pulled the plug again.

To his credit, Subaru was a damn stud. He never stopped bucking and thrusting, and as the water flooded away, I found the heat of his body filling me up. I found the reason people always loved talking about having sex. Sex was amazing. Sex was impossibly mind-blowing. I couldn't believe people could feel this way. I felt connected to every single thing in the universe. Felt like Subaru and I were inside each other, body and soul.

And then it was gone, and it was just me and Subaru sliding around on top of each other in the tub. I was confused. It was like there was a wall in front of me, in my mind, which had just formed out of nothingness, some mental block cutting me off from the whole universe.

I needed it. I needed whatever was on the other side of that wall. Mentally, I pressed into it, let Subaru bang me right into it. My fingers pressed at it, finding any chink and probing ever deeper. The wall in my mind shuddered and flexed as I teased it, pushing my hands through it like it was the wall of a bubble, stretching at my insistence.

I tore at the wall, feeling like I knew more that found weaknesses in it, I ripped them open, and through the gaps, could feel that beautiful feeling, that amazing one-ness. This mental block, whatever it was, I would not be defeated by it. Not when I was so close.

For whole minutes, I tore away at the black wall in my mind, enjoying Subaru panting and thrusting into me the whole while. Strips of it tore away in my mind's fingers, and as I drew nearer and nearer to breaking through, I felt the wall was afraid. I was hurting it, killing it. It shuddered and writhed in protest as I clawed my way through.

[Lia!] I heard and felt Saga gasp. [Stop!]

"Did you say something?" Subaru grunted.

"No, don't stop. Whatever you do, don't stop."

[Lia, please!] Her voice in my head was almost the same voice which came out of her mouth, quiet, pleading, desperate.

I pushed through the wall, let Subaru slam my body right through it, and it shattered. From somewhere nearby, I heard a quiet scream.

It didn't matter. I'd found the bliss I needed, the happiness I'd been missing these past few days. These past few months. This past lifetime. I felt every person around me, could feel myself on Subaru, and him within me, and knew everyone else felt the same. As we touched their minds, they burned as mine did, and in moments they abandoned their boring lives and demeaning chores and joined us in purity.

Soon I was a hundred bodies entwined, feeling the impossible sensation of feeling, sensing, being everyone all at once. Every thought was impossible to have, my mind was nothing but waves of pleasure, crashing again and again and again.

The wall was attempting to reform, to block me out. I kicked at the fragments of it, never allowing them to even begin to resist us.

I felt like a goddess. I'd transcended humanity, left behind that mortal world and all of the suffering and worries and cares, as we ascended straight past heaven into something more. A world where there was nothing but bliss, where pain was impossible, where this feeling was everything and there couldn't exist anything but this.

From within a hundred bodies, seeing and feeling and being a hundred bodies more, I sensed AEGIS, saw her both from within myself and from without, as she approached my body, still locked onto Subaru's. I tried to speak, to ask her if she had found divinity, if she would join us. I saw myself cover myself out of reflex and push a strand of hair behind my ear.

And then I discovered that pain could exist. Did exist. By the hair, I was yanked from my reverie, thrown to the floor like a dirty rag, where for the second time in as many days, I cracked my head on the tile. She didn't care. She shouted something and left. I watched desperately as the wall reconstructed itself around me, cold and unfeeling, harder and angrier than before.

I lay on the floor, feeling alone like I'd never felt before. I heard someone crying, and realized it wasn't a sound, but feeling. I was crying. Subaru was crying. Everybody was crying. Waves of crippling grief and shock and anger were pouring out of us, erasing the sublime divinity. Washing it away with our mortal miseries.

I knew the reason why. Still naked, still wet and trembling, I walked out of the bathroom, stepping over Chio's half-naked collapsed form, and went to the back yard. The grass felt soft and cold under my feet. She wasn't there. I went back inside and found her sitting on the floor in the doorway to the garage.

"You stopped us. You ruined everything," I told Saga.

She looked at me, and in the moonlight through the windows, I could see her face was a mask of tears. She clung to her knees like if she let them go, she would drift off into space. She shook silently as shock and misery flooded out of her and into my very being.

[You violated me!] she screamed in my head. [You didn't just do things to me, you tore me down, you made me feel everything!]

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"You were taking away the only thing I have in life!"

[I can't believe you! I can't believe you would do that to me! I thought we were friends, Lia! You invaded my mind!]

"You invade my mind all the time."

[I leave your mind the fuck alone all the time! I leave you alone, even if you're suffering, or have terrible ideas or even if you're hurting me, because I thought we were friends, and that's what friends do. They stand by each other. Not...not this. Not this.]

She put her head on her knees and rocked forward and back, tears streaming down her face, clinging desperately to her legs.

"It was just a little fun, Saga. You should open up and loosen up some. I don't think you understand what you're missing out on."

[You don't think I understand? Do YOU understand? Do you have any idea at all what it's like to feel and hear and see everything, every thought that happens everywhere around me? I HAVE to block it out, or I would go insane. Everyone around me would go insane. If AEGIS hadn't stopped you, where do you think you'd be?]

"Still in there, still...wrapped in happiness. Still away from...all of this, this...horrible, terrible world and everything in it."

[And you'd be there forever! You'd lose the ability to think, to feel, to do anything except fuck everyone. You'd be insane, that's what that is, do you realize that? That's what they call someone who can't think anymore. And that's what I deal with every minute of every day. I have to block it out, or else that's my everything. And then...and then you…] She shuddered and I felt anger pouring off of her like steam.

[You violated me! You tore down my mind, you forced your suck fucking fantasy right into the very core of my being!]

"It wasn't that bad, you enjoyed it, I know, I could feel you."

[You think that's the point? You think as long as it feels good, it's okay? Do you have any idea what rape is, Lia?]

"Of course I do. I'm not stupid. Brick--"

[Brick never laid a finger on you like you just did to me. Brick was a twisted, evil bastard that lived in a world very removed from reality, and you are a thousand times worse than him by far. You live in the same world as me, you knew what you were doing, and you did it anyway! You were my friend, Lia! How could you do this to your own friends!?]

"I didn't even know, okay? I just...just did what felt right."

[You tore me to shreds, Lia. You went in like you were out to destroy my mind, and then you did. You ignored me as I begged you to stop.]

She shuddered again, and I felt dark memories stirring.

[You know, when I was tortured, a lot of the XPCA did whatever they wanted with me. They did everything they could imagine. They were trying to shatter my mind. They fucked the shit out of me, Lia. They did everything you could possibly think of. They invented new ways which would be impossible for anyone other than me.]

I shuddered. "You were...nine."

[Funny that somehow that's so much worse to you than the hundreds of times they killed me. But in all that time, I could just block them out, divorce myself from my own body, my own mind, let them own me in the physical world as long as I still had my safe place in the mental one.]

She looked up at me, and I'd never seen such hate in a person's eyes, even as tears continued to pour from them.

[And you just destroyed all of that like it was nothing. You turned all my trust and love against me and used it to tear right into the very core of who I am, Lia. You violated me like I've never been violated before. I've never felt this...this empty, this helpless. I'd take a thousand years in a damn prison over one more night with you! You took away things from me...I didn't even know people could take.]

She looked at me and I saw she was completely broken. Silently bawling, heaving deep breaths, mouth agape in a still twisted scream.

"I...I'm sorry. I didn't know."

[You didn't CARE!]

"I didn't. And I should have. I'm sorry. I don't know what I can do."

[Just leave me alone. You've already done enough. You've done more than anyone could ever do.]

She stood, trembling, and walked past me like a ghost, leaving the house. I drifted into the backyard, taking her spot under the tree and trying to figure out everything I'd just done. A few minutes later, I heard doors slamming through the house. I thought for an insane moment Saga came back, but that couldn't be, I couldn't feel her on my mind anymore. Wherever she'd gone, she'd gone.

I sat staring at the blank sky above me, visible through the boughs of the leafless tree. There were no stars visible out here, it was just empty blackness.

I did know what I was doing to Saga as I did it, and I just didn't care.

I'd been in and on her mind enough to know what it felt like, and yeah, I could make whatever excuses I wanted about being lost in the moment or doing what felt good or right, but at the end of the day, they were just excuses. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway.

Just when I felt like there wasn't any further I could possibly sink, I somehow found new depths. Worse than Brick. I thought of how my chest tightened, and how I involuntarily tensed whenever he was near, how I couldn't even pull the trigger when I had him lined up in my sights because of how scared I was, until I thought he'd shot Karu.

And I let it sink in that now Saga, one of my best friends in the world, inarguably the person who knew and understood me best, and accepted me despite all my faults and failings, who tried to steer me away from this and every other calamity with calm, loving insistence, everything I felt for Brick, she now felt for me.

As we had talked, I could feel her hate for me, her shock and anger at my betrayal, her crushing sadness, despair at what I'd taken from her. Could feel her emotions seeping out of her and cut into my mind like a knife. All that hurt, pointed straight at me, and all of it, my fault.

No, what I felt for Brick was nothing to how she felt for me. I was a monster. I didn't deserve the title of human, or Exhuman, or anything. I should simply not be.

I stood up and Chiho saw me moving outside and came to the door.

"Lia, baby? Is that you?" she asked, her voice shaking. "What happened? Why are you naked? Why was I naked?"

"I ruined everything," I told her flatly. "Saga left."

"AEGIS is gone too. Subaru's unconscious in the bath." She looked shaken. "It's empty," she added, like that was important. "What happened? All I remember is...I was studying in my room, and then...I felt this impossible...thing. I wasn't myself anymore. I was so scared."

I sighed. "That was me. I don't...don't even know what to do."

"Let me help," she said. Her voice was shaky but her face was calm and confident. "Just explain to me what happened, and we'll figure out what we can do."

"There's...there's a lot to explain, and I don't think you want to know most of it."

"I don't care. I'm involved now, I don't care if it's illegal or crazy or what. Whatever just happened...it was like someone took over my body and mind. It wasn't normal, and I don't know if it's magic or what behind it, but I don't know that I can live without knowing."

"Don't joke about not living," I said, finding a sudden fixation with the idea.

"Lia." She was frozen, looking at me with panic in her eyes. "Do you need to talk to me?"

I shook my head. "No. You're right. We need to worry about what's going on right now. We can worry about me later, my friends are hurting a lot more than I am."

We sat there for a moment in silence. Chiho was anxious, but I didn't even know how to start.

"Um, do you want to put clothes on?" she asked, with a mix of trying to respect my thinking while also being nervous about the situation. Nervous. Scared stiff, more like.

"Yeah. Of course. I'm sorry." I took a deep breath and stood up. She followed me obediently while I went to my room and dressed, and as soon as I'd done so, I sat down on my bed and began talking. It was easier to start somehow, as I rolled from one simple task like getting dressed to another, like explaining Athan.

"So almost a year ago, my brother became an Exhuman," I began. I told her the whole story, in the broadest strokes, glossing over most details but filling in the blanks on who and what Saga and AEGIS were, and the events of the last few weeks which had led us here.

She listened attentively and silently, sometimes going white or gasping quietly, but above all she listened. As I explained how Athan had freed Saga, I felt guilt claw at my insides so strongly I needed to stop talking to keep from being sick.

Saga been right, the whole time. Humans couldn't be trusted. I'm sure that's how she was feeling now. After that incident with Athan, she became more open and trusting, and into that vulnerability, I'd stepped. I couldn't believe I could be so unbearably stupid.

It took less than ten minutes to recount everything of relevance. I'd pretty much left out Karu, and the whole part where AEGIS and Athan fought, but I didn't think that mattered.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Well. Kind of okay, I guess."

"Everything clear enough?"

"No. Not even a little bit. Almost everything you said made very little sense, and if I hadn't just lived through something like that, I'd be worried you were crazy, Lia-baby. But I can tell you're not, and you're scared, and you need my help. So let's go."

"Go where?"

"Go find your friends, obviously. They're out there, hurt and lost, and they need us."

"They don't want me. They're too smart for that."

"Everybody makes mistakes, Lia-baby. You have to let them know you sincerely, absolutely regret it, and absolutely change. They'll see that."

I stood up suddenly, surprising her, and went to my desk. I grabbed both my new bottles of vodka and the open one as well, and tossed my flask to her.

"Um, please don't," she said.

"I'm not drinking. Come with me." I led her to the kitchen and opened all three bottles, pouring all of those mind-twisting contemptible bad decisions right down the drain.

"Look at you go!" Chiho said with a smile.

I twisted the lid off the flask and emptied the last few drops from it as well, and then held it out to her. "If you ever see me with this, I want you to slap it out of my hands, and then beat the everliving frog out of me. Got it?"

"I'll use a baseball bat. I'm serious."

"Good." I threw the flask into the trash under the sink, along with the bottles.

"Let's get looking," she said.

"I'll look for Saga. I can kinda sense when I'm close to her. You go after AEGIS. She'll be...somewhere with 'net, probably."

"Got it. If I see Saga, I'll call you though."

We split up and headed out into the night. I tore through dark street after street, not even stopping to look, just feeling out with my mind for that sensation of walking into her range and feeling your mind opening to her. She couldn't be that far, she wasn't that strong, physically.

After fifteen minutes, I got a short message from Chiho.

> Found AEGIS

That was good at least.

Two hours later, and I was exhausted. I'd been running this whole time, moving in wider and wider circles, trying to sweep the whole city from our place out. I'd never run this long before, my breath was coming in sharp gasps and my legs were screaming. I had to stop.

But I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. Not after everything I'd already failed at, not after all the hurt and pain I'd already inflicted on so many good people. She was out there, and this pain was nothing compared to what I'd put her through. I would keep running until I found her or died, I decided.

And so I kept running.